Halloween haunted house

[exquized1]

Ok I've been told that I can build a kid friendly haunted house for the cub scouts in my area. I am hoping that some of you can help out with some thoughts or ideals. I have a pretty good size room to set up in but it is on the second floor. Would like to include some PNEUMATIC props but the cost is way too high. I have about a zero dollar budget. Any help on where I can scavenge the parts from or get by cheap. I think with the space I have I can set up 5 10x20 carports and 2 10x10's. Thanks in advance.

[CatatonicBug]

One word: Blacklight!

Get some of the kids to volunteer as actors in the show, with an adult in each "room" as a supervisor. Theme each room differently, and send the people through the haunted house in groups, where they stop in each room.

Use things like clean misted water in a fan to simulate a blood splatter effect, or air jets around their feet to simulate rats brushing against them.

[exquized1]

I got 6 blacklight tubes the 4' ones. I did this 2 years ago but most of the kids going thru have moved onto boy scouts. I really don't want to repeat any of those props. we had the dr. who was pulling rubber ducks and toy trucks out of our victim. The next room had a gillitune and a few hanging skeletons. next room was divided in half. first 10x10 was a mess kids room with a stuffed animal monster. Kid covered in stuffed animals in a pile. ya he did a great job. next room was the spider room that the kids had to crawl thru. than we did up the bathroom with the dead body outline. next was the mad scientist than a maze area out took about 4 days to set up ran for about 2 hours. Spent the next year cleaning up the confetti that I thought looked cool under blacklight. LOL.

[Guy_b_g]

Not sure of the ages of your cub scouts, but a guy jumping out of the dark with a Jason (?) mask and a chainsaw with the chain removed is always good for a few screams. Just gotta be sure the saw will start on the first or second pull. Not good for very young kids though.

[exquized1]

ya the scouts are 7 to 11 but they will have younger brothers and sister. I think this need to be more of a fun house type. the reason I am starting already it to give me plenty of time to find free stuff to use. And I am on lay-off so I have alot of time on my hands.

[latexeses]

If you have an honest to goodness scrap yard anyhwere near your place you might check to see if he has any air valves and the scrap pistons. Places that have conveyor lines usually ditch the old hardware when they change the line. I bought some pistons up to a foot long for a buck each. Thay had longer but didn't want to mess with any bigger.
Work good for makin' something jump!

[exquized1]

Did some checking around and can't find a scrap yard close to me. I asked at work and all their scrap gets picked up by a company out of Chicago. I than asked if they had any machines that was getting scrapped out that I can harvest some parts off of. Of course their answer was "Even if we had some you can't have the parts cuz that would be stealing" I even offered to pay scrap price for them Go figure. So I am back to square one with a growing list of supples I'm looking for.

[ross]

greetings....

hey there exquized1......you may know me as ross, but on....

http://www.halloweenforum.com/

i am the SHADOW OF DEATH.....


they have all kinds of ideas to help you....ya could even use pvc pipe, end caps and with some creative dremeling and o-ring usage, presto....you have a caveman style pneumatic cylinder that will get the job done......takes a little man cave engineering, but it can be done and is very effective.....check out the link above and let me know what ya think...also if you go to youtube and search for camintheclem, i have video of my house on christmas....i mean halloween......it was 2008 and have improved it, but it gives you an idea....you might want to check out the makeup SWMBO is wearing when the camera comes up to the door....let me know and i can hook you up if you want...i will be doing this prop for halloween this year hopefully

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhriZXCyyhg

....ride hard, ride safe...ross

[exquized1]

Thanks ross,

I went ahead and joined using this screen name. There seams to be a lot of info for me to surf thru. Looks like I got my puter time planned out for awhile.

[b.walker5]

We dont really get that big on halloween over here, but years ago when the kids were small I got a "little" serious one year. I searched the Internet for sites and downloaded a heap of sound effects, and then went to the local electronic supplies store and bought a bunch of 10mm red and yellow led's, and some resistors and battery holders, cost me about 20 bucks IIRC. With a cheap mask and cloak from a toy store, a polystyrene head from a hairdressors supply store, some wire, a speaker and some 2 x 4 I built a life size ghoul that stood in a secluded spot at my front door. (The yellow leds were the eyes). I had a couple of old pinhole surveillance camera's at the time so I set one up so I could see who was coming up the drive. (the other was watching the path out on the street) I had a hidden multicore cable from the ghoul to my desktop pc and whenever anyone approached the door I would trigger some bloodcurldling sound effect that often resulted in a hysterical kid running out the drive, followed closely by a distraught parent trying to run down a panicked child.

I also rigged up a borrowed smoke machine to be controlled by my PC serial port (with a relay board) and a small electric motor mounted on a board with an off centre weight on the shaft (think vibrator) also controlled by the PC. We have a hedge along the front of our property so i hid the smoke machine behind the hedge and ran a hose up to my letterbox. I loosened the mounting bolts of the letterbox and put the electric motor, and a small speaker inside it. I positioned some red leds so they were looking out the slot, and whenever anyone walked past, the letterbox would start shaking and screaming and billowing smoke out the slot past the red eyes.

The local kids talked about it for years afterwards and some of the younger ones used to cross the road to walk down the street. I got into trouble with the postie the next day when she tried to deliver mail, She fell off her bike and was not amused at all.